All posts tagged: Walls

Strange Physics: Why Wi-Fi and radio waves can pass through walls but light can’t

Strange Physics: Why Wi-Fi and radio waves can pass through walls but light can’t

Published by Jenni Sidey

A closed door feels absolute. Light stays in one room, darkness settles in the next, and the boundary seems obvious enough to stop thinking about. Yet the same wall that blocks the glow from your kitchen barely slows the Wi-Fi signal drifting through it. That mismatch feels strange for a reason. Visible light and radio waves belong to the same family. They are both electromagnetic waves. They follow the same basic physics. James Clerk Maxwell tied that picture together in the 19th century, and nothing in modern physics has overturned it. So the real puzzle is not why Wi-Fi moves through walls. It is why a wall treats two versions of the same phenomenon so differently. The answer has less to do with the wall being a barrier and more to do with the wall acting like a very selective filter. A popular explanation makes this sound simpler than it is. Radio waves have long wavelengths, people say, so they somehow slip through. Visible light has shorter wavelengths, so it gets blocked. That picture feels …

Queen Elizabeth’s private ‘disco’ morning routine behind palace walls

Queen Elizabeth’s private ‘disco’ morning routine behind palace walls

Published by Daniella Wilson

A close friend of the late Queen Elizabeth II revealed intimate details about how the former monarch liked to wake herself up in the morning, and it involved some killer dance moves to the tune of Terry Wogan’s Radio 2 show.  Angela Kelly, 68, was the Queen’s dresser for 25 years and reflected on their time spent together choosing outfits before her busy day of royal engagements started. She explained that King Charles’s mother loved ABBA and would move “side to side” every time the band’s hit, ‘Dancing Queen’, would come on the radio and that the pair had great fun together.  Angela first started at Buckingham Palace as an assistant dresser in 1994, and slowly climbed the ranks to become the Queen’s most trusted advisor. She eventually became her personal assistant and senior dresser in 2002. During her first interview reflecting on her time with the late monarch since her death aged 96 in 2022, Angela opened up about their special morning times and explained how they danced while getting ready.  “When the song …

A hidden cloister in the center of Rome has a turbulent past etched on its walls

A hidden cloister in the center of Rome has a turbulent past etched on its walls

Published by Sam Flores

ROME (AP) — A hidden cloister just a few steps from Rome’s Pantheon is a peaceful place for silent meditation — if the millions of tourists who trudge past even know it’s there. Behind the large wooden door, its frescoed walls closed to the general public reveal details of the compound’s dramatic history, including papal conclaves and the Inquisition interrogation of Galileo Galilei. At the center is a pond with goldfish and turtles surrounded by olive trees, two large palms and a tree laden with bright oranges that the friars use to make marmalade. Well-fed cats lounge about in sunny spots on the grass. There are still 20 friars who live in the convent around the cloister carrying out their duties. “It is designed to be a place of prayer, of meditation and therefore in some way to encourage prayer and the meditation of the friars,” said Friar Aucone. Over the centuries, this space has attracted important figures, St. Catherine of Siena and the Renaissance painter Fra Angelico, both of whom are buried in the …

Panicked OpenAI Execs Cutting Projects as Walls Close In

Panicked OpenAI Execs Cutting Projects as Walls Close In

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech In 2025 alone, OpenAI released a controversial text-to-video generator, dubbed Sora, and an abysmally slow web browser called Atlas. It also announced top-secret hardware alongside former Apple exec Jony Ive, and signed a $200 million contract with the US Department of Defense. Meanwhile, the company continues to burn through billions of dollars a month, astronomical losses that have executives there feeling agitated. The company recently announced that it’s planning to spend a whopping $600 billion on AI infrastructure by 2030, an ungodly sum only beaten out by its original promise: $1.4 trillion, more than twice the revised figure. Now, the company is coming to terms that it may have spread itself too thin, and is now looking to refocus its resources on its coding and enterprise users. As the Wall Street Journal reports, OpenAI’s CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, told employees that the company is “actively looking at which areas to deprioritize.” “We cannot miss this moment because …

Whispering Walls and Haunted Halls: 8 Gothic Novels

Whispering Walls and Haunted Halls: 8 Gothic Novels

Published by José Betancourt

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. The houses are grand and decaying. Ghost surely haunt their halls. The settings are atmospheric, the vibes uneasy. Emotions run high, omens abound. There’s a damsel in distress, there might be some mystery and romance, and everything’s shrouded in a bit of doom and gloom. If all of that sounds like a good time to you, come have a seat in the crumbling chair next to me. Whether you’re new to gothic novels or inhale them on the regular, you’ve probably heard of the gothic classics: Rebecca, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wuthering Heights (which is not the greatest love story ever told), the works of Shirley Jackson and Edgar Allen Poe, or Southern Gothic classics like Beloved by Toni Morrison and Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor. You don’t have to look too hard to find fantastic gothic lit, but maybe you’re looking for more recent works of gothic fiction. Below you’ll find nine new and recent gothic …

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: From the Walls of Babylon to the Sewers of Rome

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: From the Walls of Babylon to the Sewers of Rome

Published by José Betancourt

You may not be able to name all, or even most, of the sev­en won­ders of the ancient world. But you almost cer­tain­ly know that there were sev­en of them. In a way, that aligns well enough with the world­view of the Greeks who first made ref­er­ence to such a list, giv­en their near-rev­er­ence for that num­ber. Sev­en were the strings of the lyre (unless there hap­pened to be eight or nine), sev­en were the gates of Thebes, and sev­en were the “wan­der­ing stars” in the night sky (if you count the sun and moon). The iden­ti­ty of the won­ders was less impor­tant than the length of their list, and indeed, as ancient-his­to­ry YouTu­ber Gar­rett Ryan explains in his Told in Stone video above, addi­tions and changes were pro­posed since the begin­ning. The clas­sic sev­en-won­ders ros­ter includes the Hang­ing Gar­dens of Baby­lon, the Stat­ue of Zeus at Olympia, the Tem­ple of Artemis at Eph­esus, the Mau­soleum at Hali­car­nas­sus, the Colos­sus of Rhodes, the Light­house of Alexan­dria, and the Great Pyra­mid of Giza, that last being …

Carol Bove Reveals Miró Mural Typically Hidden in Guggenheim’s Walls

Carol Bove Reveals Miró Mural Typically Hidden in Guggenheim’s Walls

Published by Jenni Sidey

Carol Bove‘s rotunda-filling Guggenheim Museum show in New York may be billed as a retrospective, but it’s not a solo show in the traditional sense: it also features works by a range of artists interspersed throughout. In fact, the crown jewel of the show is not a sculpture by Bove but a mural by Joan Miró that’s always on hand at the Guggenheim—even though the general public typically can’t see it. Composed of 190 ceramic tiles, the work is a 19-foot-long mural titled Alicia (1965–67) that Miró produced in collaboration with the ceramicist Josep Llorens Artigas. It’s now viewable near the ramp leading up to the second level for the first time in more than 20 years. Related Articles According to a text within the show, the mural was commissioned in 1963 by Harry F. Guggenheim, who was at the time the president of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to pay homage to Alicia Patterson, the Newsday editor who was married to Guggenheim and died that same year. Most of the time, the mural is …

Building Bridges, Not Walls: Psychology and Neighbor Love

Building Bridges, Not Walls: Psychology and Neighbor Love

Published by Jenni Sidey

Do you wish to grow in your ability to love your neighbors? Are you intrigued by how psychological concepts and religious principles might come together to offer perspectives on the facilitators and barriers to loving our neighbors across cultural differences? Drawing from psychology and religion, my colleagues Katie Douglass and Brittany Tausen recently wrote a book that is full of insights and practical applications for how we might deepen our interpersonal connections and treat others with more kindness. In an interview with me, Katie (a practical theologian) and Brittany (a social psychologist) responded to a few questions about their work: Paul Youngbin Kim: For the average religious person, loving our neighbors is not a controversial idea. But why does religion sometimes inflict more harm than good on this front? How might we counter this tendency? Brittany Tausen: Religion can be leveraged as a motivator to love all well, or as a way to draw boundaries around who to love and who not to love. It is when religion is used to build walls and craft …

If These Walls Could Talk | Colin Grant

If These Walls Could Talk | Colin Grant

Published by José Betancourt

In Jamaican culture, a duppy is the vengeful spirit of a person who has died harboring a grievance. Those whom the duppy blames will be haunted with unremitting wrath. “It’s not the soul” that makes the duppy, an elderly woman informed the anthropologist Martha Beckwith in the 1920s, “for the soul goes to heaven, and it’s not the body, for we know that goes away into the earth, but it’s the shadow.” It’s still the custom in some parts of Jamaica for friends and relations of the troubled deceased to nail down the sleeves and socks of the corpse in its coffin to ensure that the duppy cannot escape. But what if the duppy is already at large? The Jamaican novelist Diana McCaulay’s A House for Miss Pauline is a supernatural story about the consequences of what is assumed to be a murder. The corpse of the victim, Turner Buchanan, a foreigner, has never been found, and Buchanan’s shadow is just one of several candidates for the duppy, if that’s what it is, that wails …

Chinese Robots Can Now Run Up Walls

Chinese Robots Can Now Run Up Walls

Published by José Betancourt

While humanoid robots have a long way to go to prove useful in our day-to-day lives, they’ve at least made leaps and bounds in showing off their agility on stage. Case in point, the televised Spring Festival Gala put on by the state-run China Media Group over the weekend featured an impressive synchronized martial arts routine. Organizers were even confident enough to put the well-being of children on the line, having young performers spar with a small army of nunchuck- and spear-wielding Unitree G1 robots. At one point, several of the robots can be seen performing a wall flip, an impressive feat that involves them literally running up a temporary wall on stage. (You can check it out for yourself at the 3:16 mark in the video embedded below.) Martial arts robots dazzle at 2026 Spring Festival Gala #CoolChina #springfestival2026 It’s a dazzling performance, showcasing how far the country’s robotics industry has come in a few short years, a massive surge in interest that has even led to the country’s regulators warning of an impending …